What if I gave you a choice between doing the right thing, and doing the wrong thing. Which one would you choose? …

But what if I then told you that by doing the wrong thing, your revenue would go up by 25% and your costs would drop by 50% (doubling the profit), now what would you do? Would you choose to do the wrong thing and go for the money, despite the fact that it is still the wrong thing to do?

This is actually the exact dilemma we are faced with in the media industry today.

I wouldn’t say it’s “right” vs. “wrong” — rather, the dilemma is usually between “great but less profitable” and “mediocre-to-bad but more profitable”. Most of the time, it’s a quality dilemma, not a moral one.

It’s easy to slide into mediocrity when more people are involved and leadership is weak (hence, “design by committee”), or when business isn’t going very well (hence, “rate this app” dialogs, or the entire publishing industry). Big-company iOS games are all but guaranteed to be horrible.